Lovefest 2.0

I am, at this moment, listening to Bruce Sterling's keynote address from SXSW. He says that he doubts anyone will use the term blog in 10 years. Robert Scoble disagrees, and is, as it happens, the reason I'm listening to this address.

It's good. Sterling is calling for a criticism. A criticism of these newer media forms. He's also calling fanart, deviant art, and mashups out as being not great, as having no potential for the development of greatness. I'm inclined to agree.

Sterling said that blogging could become something that could evolve its own form of greatness, but that it won't happen, because it's moving around too much. It's too wiggly and has too little ground to stand on because the ground keeps falling away.

He also introduced me to the term commons based peer production, which is a less than catchy term for the awesomeness that people are capable of. And speaking of awesomeness, have you been watching the Show with Ze Frank? Yes? No? Well, it's been an entertaining videoblog, but it's ending very soon. In the year Ze has been making the Show, a community has grown up. I haven't been part of the community, but all the people on this episode were part of that community. These people are who we all are, all of us who are, apparently, Time's Person of the Year (btw? Time, that was lame. So lame.). And it's cool. Most of us are the person who didn't send in a video, who didn't create a forum profile. We're just hanging out. And we're happy hanging out. When we find somewhere we like, we delurk. I read a bajillion blogs. But I lurk.

Back to Bruce. He mentioned folk culture. He then moved into calling it red neck culture. Maybe, maybe not. Internet hick culture=fanfic? I don't know. The negative connotation might be a little harsh. But down home production, making do with what you got, that's classic. I have a Folkways album of Kentucky Mountain Music which is amazing. But many of the tunes they sing to are, at their base, medieval music. Like, literally, it's an English renaissance song that is now (or was decades ago) all twangy and hick-ified. And I like it better. So all is relative. All is relative. High culture, low culture, how do you figure it out on the internet?